Tender Buttons: Writing Through the State of the State of Things, Cunnilingus Review of a Book on Cunning Lingus—will someone get me a lingam—please! Creative Engagement with Petra Kuppers’ Pearl Stitch, by jj hastain

I don’t want to say (stay) critical inside the places that turn me on. In these, I want to play at being.

Pearl—the nickname of what is extracted from a cyst. Requires tools to dig into and retrieve safely. A book—a tool. Or the other type of pearl—grown from grit kept close to home in the shell (of “she”?)—the hard reality encasing the soft tissue from which another glowing and hard reality emerges. Queer cock. Protuberant materiality—so palpable. Turn me on. A book a sex toy—vehicle and vessel by which the dream seeps. Fragrance. Seepages: see-pages. All kinds of crossings—dear “border crosser”—take me where you are going—where you have been—wherever going goes.

Quick febrile vitality—pick up the pace (“keep in motion”/ “circular dignity”). Lick the sweaty pearl—“the matron has fire in her eyes.” Violences and waylays. Boons, “mechanized looms” and bliss: “The flesh is the beloved.” Pain, sense of place, the body—the body that is tampered with in an effort to tame her is not the body they could ever get away with. Proof is in the plumpness of the page.

“Do you dream of the matron or the foreman?” The matron, of course! With foreman-shaped biceps—chin hair. Her as hir—the “flesh translation.” “Change your gender.” Dream in the language of queer aptitude. Dream in the language of lyrical statuses—these desires that bend.

States—“samsara suits me.” In which way, honey? Suit a fabric, a skin? Has a sudden and relevant encasement—not at all unlike the pearl’s great and orbiculate intuition—emerged to keep you in (“double witch” “veer[ing] inward”) as you express yourself outwardly? When the book speaks of the “earth, so tired” are you speaking through it?

Realization the main character is not straight. What gave it away? Love poems in every direction (“the ring of my one true love”). Eros by which “a few wayward desert blooms” are tucked “into her hair en route to nowhere.” “Scent remains on the pillow for years.”

From her to lover from her to here—the unexpected areas must be explored—the air the hair “slides against your throat [to] rest on our darkening beach.”

“Sophia shall rock me”—through any face in the emanation. “Autopsy boutique”—tears falling out, breath leaking loudly, sweat—the “feminist cock stranded”—until the moment eros releases it to act. “I can see her nipples lifting up to me, across the chair arm’s hard divide. The feel of these delicate stems in my mouth draws water.” Like Eileen Myles’ kitchen lovers suddenly take flight due to the blood wings—Kuppers shows us elementals’ ability to assist us in transition, translation. “Transfantasy”—the mythic bed can hold it all.

Regardless of what a “pearl stitch” traditionally is—the somatic experience—the vibrational transmission for me in regard to Kuppers’ book is learning to stitch with pearls. Ceremonial incantation leads to ceremonial deed. Can I fit the bulging swell, the glowing bud through the tight squeeze around it? Cause beauty to stretch on behalf of beauty? Creatrix chew the nacreous wonder. Whether imitation pearls or those animate through spontaneity in the wild— please oh please—make my bed grand, my desire full of ringing my parts stretched with gleam of rounds: “yoke me parallel.”